Destiny, kismet, serendipity, karma - whatever you want to call it, “Cloud Atlas” is full of it. And when I say “full of it,” I mean “it” to be New Age pseudo-spiritual baloney. “Everything is connected,” the film’s tagline reads, and those who subscribe to that philosophy are more apt to be moved by its purported profundities. The rest of us will find it profoundly silly.

IF YOU GO

‘Cloud Atlas’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPAA Rating: R for violence, language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use

Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess

Directors: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer

Run time: 172 minutes

It’s easy to admire “Cloud Atlas” as a technical filmmaking achievement. Adapting David Mitchell’s 2004 novel, sibling directors Andy and Lana Wachowski helmed three of the six narratives tied together here, and Tom Tykwer handled the rest. The six stories occur in the past, present and future, and cast members play multiple roles. The finished product is nearly three hours long, and in some ways, is a remarkable display of writing and editing, as the filmmakers take pains to illustrate the interconnectedness of the characters through thematic and visual motifs.

But as principals Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Doona Bae and Ben Wishaw perform, we are essentially asked to recognize the similarities and differences among their various roles. The story infers that each individual actor’s set of characters is similar, a variation of the one preceding it in time – you know, past lives and all that. Apparently, these people are destined to interact with each other forever, whether on a slaveship in 1849 or on an island “106 winters after the fall.”

The Wachowskis and Tykwer use gimmickry to achieve this. They glue fake teeth and noses, period hair, monacles, goofy glasses, beards and other prosthetics to the cast in order to make them specific to the individual story’s culture and time period. For example, Sturgess plays a British 19th-century lawyer in one thread, and in another, he plays a Korean revolutionary, where the latex and hairpiece make him look like Mr. Spock. Sometimes, the cast is asked to use accents or vernacular, and Hanks is an egregious overplayer of such affectations.

So the distractions from the basic storytelling are many. And here is where any summation of the film threatens to become a tedious list of the whos and whats and wheres and whens of the narrative. I don’t know where to begin, but it’s worth noting that the film features Broadbent mugging cartoonishly as an aging publisher stuck in a nursing home against his will. Hanks plays a humble goatherder being stalked by what appears to be Weaving’s large, invisible leprechaun. And no matter what story she’s in, Berry gives stiff, unconvincing performances.

It’s wiser to speak about “Cloud Atlas” in general terms. The directors tackle a variety of tones and genres, including comedy, science fiction, romance and period drama, although none of it is done particularly well, all of it broad and flat. It references, intentionally or otherwise, sci-fi films such as “Mad Max,” “Soylent Green,” “Blade Runner” and, lord help us all, “Battlefield Earth.” It also has the whiff of contrivance that made we-are-all-connected films such as “Babel” and “Crash” so divisive.

Although there’s so much, too much, going on here, the film’s core message is quite simple: “We are bound to others, past and present,” as one character, a blatant Christ figure, states outright with an irritating air of perspicacity. Whether we’re in the now or then or later, what it means to be human remains the same. I get it. But “Cloud Atlas” is, too often, a goofy costume party. Some of the individual stories would work fine on their own, but weaved together, they’re presented with enough pretentious hooey, the film becomes repellent. It seems to beg for equal amounts of ridicule and admiration.